IDEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND:
THE CULT OF THE PAST IN CHINESE THOUGHT
As we have just noted, Chinese antiquarianism remained limited both in time (it appeared late) and in scope (it was mostly concerned with the diverse manifestations of the written word).
These limitations may seem paradoxical when we consider that two important cultural factors ought apparently to have produced an environment particularly conducive to antiquarian pursuits. These factors are:
1. that China’s dominant ideology — Confucianism — extolled the values of the past; and
2. that China from a very early age developed an extraordinary sense of history — it actually possesses the longest uninterrupted historiographical tradition.
On the question of the Confucian cult of the past,[13] two significant qualifications should be made. First, in ancient Chinese thought, the cult of the past was far from being a universal dogma. The quarrel between the “ancients” and the “moderns” occupied a considerable part of the philosophical debates in pre-imperial China — the most creative period in the history of Chinese thought. At the end of that period, the modern school gained the upper hand, thus providing the ideological framework for the establishment of the first Chinese empire. (In fact, the notorious initiative of the first emperor, who decided “to burn the books and bury the scholars alive,” marked the gruesome climax of this movement to obliterate the past.) Shortly before, the last (and most agile) of the great exponents of Confucianism, Xun Zi, had come to terms with “modernism” and accommodated the Confucian tradition to the prevalent trends of the time.[14]
Secondly, it is true that Confucius considered antiquity as the repository of all human values. Therefore, according to him, the sage’s mission was not to create anything anew but merely to transmit the heritage of the ancients. In actual fact, such a program was far less conservative than might first appear (Confucius himself played a revolutionary role in his time): the antiquity to which he referred was a lost antiquity, which the sage had to seek and practically to reinvent. Its actual contents were thus highly fluid and not susceptible to objective definition or circumscription by a specific historical tradition. Similarly, in later periods, nearly all the great Confucian reformers in Chinese history used to invoke the authority of the ancients to condemn modern practices — but what was meant by these semantic conventions practically amounted to the exact opposite: their so-called antiquity referred to a mythical Golden Age — actually their utopian vision of the future—whereas the so-called modern practices referred to the inheritance of the recent past; that is, in fact, the real past.
On the question of the great historiographical tradition of China and the unique awareness of history developed by Chinese culture, only one basic observation should be made here, in direct connection with our topic. It is true that China produced from a very early period a magnificent historiography. Two thousand years ago, Chinese historians already displayed methods that were remarkably modern and scientific; this, however, should not lead us to misunderstand their objective, which remained essentially philosophic and moral.
From a very early stage — well before Confucius — the Chinese evolved the notion that there could only be one form of immortality: the immortality conferred by history. In other words, life-after-life was not to be found in a supernature, nor could it rely upon artefacts: man only survives in man — which means, in practical terms, in the memory of posterity, through the medium of the written word.[15]
This brings us back to our starting point, Segalen’s poetical intuition that Chinese everlastingness does not inhabit monuments, but people. Permanence does not negate change, it informs change. Continuity is not ensured by the immobility of inanimate objects, it is achieved through the fluidity of the successive generations.[16]
A CASE STUDY:
THE “PREFACE TO THE ORCHID PAVILION”
After having dealt with theoretical notions, let us now conclude by examining one exemplary case — a concrete instance that illustrates the actual mechanisms of the relationship between a “spiritual” tradition and its material expression.
My example is taken from calligraphy, which — as I already pointed out — is considered in China as the supreme art. The particular piece I am going to present is itself traditionally considered as the absolute masterpiece of this supreme art. In the entire history of Chinese art there is probably no other individual work that could claim a similar prestige, or could have exerted as wide and lasting an influence. It became a cornerstone in the development of calligraphy. Practically all the major calligraphers of later centuries defined themselves in relation to this particular work.
This arch-famous work is called the Lan ting xu, or Preface to the Orchid Pavilion, by Wang Xizhi (307–365), the greatest calligrapher of all ages.[17]
First, a few words need to be said on the work itself and the circumstances of its creation. In 353, on the occasion of a spring ritual, a group of scholars went on an excursion to a beautiful spot called the Orchid Pavilion. It was a merry and refined gathering, dedicated to the enjoyment of friendship, poetry and wine. At the end of the day, all the poems that had been improvised by the participants were collected, and Wang Xizhi wrote a preface to the collection. The preface itself is a short prose-essay in 320 words. On that day, Wang Xizhi was particularly inspired, and when he calligraphed his preface, he really surpassed himself. Later on, he repeatedly tried to recapture the unique quality of his original creation, and literally made hundreds of attempts to reduplicate his own masterpiece, but never succeeded in equalling the miraculous beauty of the premier jet.
How was this calligraphy handed down in history? Here the plot thickens and even acquires the bizarre and murky twists of a detective story.
After Wang Xizhi’s death, the Orchid Pavilion was kept by his descendants and remained within the family. However, during the first 200 years of its existence, no mention was ever made of it; seemingly, no one had a chance to see it.
Two hundred and fifty years later, it came into the hands of a monk who made copies of it, had these distributed and thus laid the ground for Wang’s subsequent artistic reputation.
Three hundred years later, Wang’s calligraphic style aroused the enthusiasm of Emperor Tang Taizong. Taizong avidly hunted for his calligraphies and gathered the most exhaustive collection of his autographs (2,290 items — all to be eventually scattered). However, the crowning jewel, the Orchid Pavilion, was still missing from this collection. After devious manoeuvres, combining deception and violence, the emperor finally succeeded in securing possession of the masterpiece — at the cost of a human life.[18] Taizong treasured the Orchid Pavilion and ordered copies to be made from it (both tracing copies and free-hand copies); these copies were then carved on stone and rubbings were taken from the stone tablets. Eventually the original stones were lost or destroyed, but new tablets were carved from the original rubbings. As the original rubbings themselves disappeared, new rubbings were taken from later engravings — and with the passing of time, the study of the pedigree of these copies of copies of copies, and the establishment of their genealogical tree, became a specialised discipline of mind-boggling complexity.